Search Articles

How Has Physician Compensation Evolved Over the Past 5 Years? – 1/29/2013

The past five years brought waves of healthcare debate as costs continue to skyrocket -- and demands on doctors don't show any signs of lessening. While the ups and downs haven't drastically altered physician compensation, per se, the small trends of five-year-terms may hint at bigger changes ten, twenty, and fifty years down the road. It's worth looking into the numbers.

According to one study cited in Medical Economics, in 2011 and 2012 family doctors brought home median compensation of $200,114. Five years back, in 2007, the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) found that family doctors earned a median of $173,812 a year. For internal medicine practitioners, the Medical Economics study found a median physician compensation of $215,689 per year for the latest data; compare that to the $190,547 internists made in 2007. Back in 2007, the MGMA noted that many of the increases in pay that year just barely rose above inflation, with primary care median compensation rising only 3.35 percent over inflation. MGMA also reported incredibly high practice costs -- and pay rates across several specialties that simply could not keep up with that frantic dollar hike. Just from the median salary rates and the more positive tone of later surveys, it appears that physicians now make a fair bit more money than they did five years ago.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides slightly lower numbers, but with a similar trend. In the latest data cycle, from 2011, the mean yearly physician's salary for family and general practitioners came up around $177,330, compared to $138,490 in 2004. Doctors with careers in internal medicine earned $158,200 a year in 2004, and $189,210 in 2011. The difference in the research group results and the BLS data most likely stems from sample size and selection bias (much of the data relies on voluntary reporting), but either way, salary alone would seem to show that doctors have seen modest gains over the past five years.

Women in particular report decent salary gains: experts working with Medscape surveys
of over 24,000 doctors in 25 specialty areas note a decreasing income gap between female and male doctors. Male doctors continue to earn more, while female doctors generally spend more time with each patient, but as more young male doctors decide to work part-time like their female counterparts, that may well change.

A quick glance at these numbers would seem to show physician compensation only improves with time -- but the raw salary data doesn't give the whole picture. That $138,490 a family doctor earned in 2004 actually had the same buying power as $168,784 in 2012, according to the BLS -- that makes the 2011 increase to $177,330 look much, much smaller. The Medscape public survey mentioned above breaks down by specialty to demonstrate that over the past two years, primary care doctors did see modest compensation increases, but specialty doctors, surgeons, and Emergency Medicine doctors saw decreases of between 2 and 12 percent. One of the surveyed doctors reported an income that dropped to 60 percent of what it was 10 years ago, despite a greatly increased workload. These pay rates don't operate in vacuums -- regulatory pressures and patient volumes have only increased over the past five years. The question now remains how future physician careers will balance workload, medical school loans, practice costs, and patient needs in an economy riddled with inflation and high healthcare prices.